The productivity payoffs of a calm mind

by Chris Bailey | Feb 22, 2023 | Calm

In my most recent book, I contend that the calmer our mind, the more productive we
become. Let me explain.

When it comes to knowledge work—tasks we do with our minds and not with our
hands—speed and efficiency matter. So does working hard. As lazy as I am, I still think we
need to hunker down to make the largest possible contribution. But what increasingly
matters more than how fast or how hard we work is how deliberately we work.

The more complex our work, the more important our approach to that work becomes.
Anyone can write a briefing, but what’s the best possible angle for it? Of the 100 things
you could be doing right now, which one lets you have the greatest impact? How can
you write a research paper in a way that makes it more likely to get published and cited?
Thinking through complex problems and tasks takes more time and thoughtfulness than
it does brute force.

This often means working more thoughtfully, and maybe even more slowly. Slow work is
not unproductive work. What we lose in speed we more than make up for in
deliberateness—as well as in undistracted attention, a critical factor of productivity.

Not all tasks are complex knowledge tasks, of course. But the higher the proportion that
are, the more you likely need this advice. (Being deliberate and thoughtful are also
inherently human skills that will likely only become more valuable as we integrate
artificial intelligence into our workflows to eliminate much of our daily drudgery.)

A calm mind makes working deliberately effortless. As I write in the book, a calm mind is
a deliberate mind, and a deliberate mind is a productive mind. Calmness may sound like
an odd ingredient to become more productive, but in practice, the connection between
productivity and calm is profound.

For starters, as I mentioned a few weeks back, research suggests that anxiety—the
opposite of calm—takes a huge cognitive toll. The more anxious our mind, the less
mental capacity we have to get things done. Anxiety even decreases the size of our
working memory—the mental scratchpad we use to think and process the world—so
much so that a standard eight-hour workday takes nearly 10 hours to complete.

As an illustration of this effect, imagine trying to do complex, cognitive work during a

bout of airplane turbulence or immediately before giving a big speech. This is the same
effect anxiety has on our attention—only instead of having sweaty palms and weak
knees before a speech, we need to work longer hours to not continue falling behind. An
anxious state of mind means we have less focus to work on what truly matters.

It is in this way that investing in calm helps us earn back time. With a calm mind, we
have a greater amount of focus and mental capacity to engage in our work and life. We
focus deeper, become more engaged, and have greater energy at our disposal. Outside

Information Classification: General

 of our work, experiences become more meaningful because we can focus more on them.
Life becomes richer.

It is essential that we more deeply enjoy the time spent in our own mind. This inner calm
makes us less emotionally reactive and helps us see things with greater equanimity. We
focus more on the positive parts of our work and life because we’re not constantly
scanning our environment for threats (like negative emails and news stories). And with
greater focus, we sink more deeply into the experiences that make life good—and that
make us more productive throughout the day.

Calm may seem like an odd place to turn when wanting to become more productive. But
as you invest in calm, I think you’ll find what I did: that the benefits are so profound that
you never want to give them up.

Information Classification: General